WOOLWICH

Nearly 250 fourth-graders from six local schools attended the annual Friends of Merrymeeting Bay Spring Bay Day at Chop Point School on Tuesday.

Fifty Friends volunteers worked to ensure students had fun while learning about a wide assortment of environmental issues.

Students and teachers attended from Fisher Mitchell in Bath, Harpswell, Phippsburg, Bowdoin Central, Woolwich and Chop Point schools.

Pittston had been due to attend, but did not because of weather.

“I can virtually guarantee the Pittston students would have had a lot more fun with us than in class today,” said Friends of Merrymeeting Bay Chairman Ed Friedman said. “The point of Bay Day is to mix quality hands-on environmental education with a healthy dose of fun.

“When the kids are really muddy and loving it, they are engaged and the experience hopefully becomes a memorable one,” said Friedman, of Bowdoinham. “They don’t care if it’s raining or not. We have had past students say, ‘I’m not stopping for lunch, I want to be an archaeologist.’ That kind of feedback confirms we are doing something right.”

Twenty-one Bay Day activities were offered, including archaeology, watershed modeling, beach seining, anadromous fish printing, environmental art, marine mammal stranding and an assortment of walks including birds, geology and ecology.

“The kids get science and politics,” Friedman said. “When we speak to them about fish kills from turbine mortality in hydro dams and what possible solutions there might be, it usually takes them about 30 seconds to suggest a screen.

“Kids really should be our legislators.”

Friends holds outdoor Bay Days in the spring and fall to complement their inschool education programs that occur throughout the school year.